A) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a probe head for inspecting the electric characteristics of an electronic device such as a semiconductor integrated circuit and a liquid crystal panel, and to its assembly method and a probe card. In this embodiment, it is assumed that the probe card has a printed circuit board to be mounted on an inspection apparatus (prober) and a probe head fixed to the printed circuit board, and that the probe head has a plurality of probes (probe pins).
B) Description of the Related Art
In a conventional method of inspecting the electric characteristics of an electronic device, a probe card disposed with a number of probes having protruded top ends is lowered to contact the top ends of the probes to the electrodes of the device. As the integration degree of electronic devices becomes large, the pitch of electrodes is made narrower and narrower. It becomes much more necessary to perform the position alignment between the probes and electrodes of an electronic device at a precision in the order of μm.
Patent Document #1, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. HEI-10-300784, Patent Document #2, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2000-46869, disclose the technologies of adjusting the relative positions of four substrates disposed with probes by sucking the substrates on a slanted plane.
Patent Document #3, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2000-65860, discloses the technologies wherein four mounting bases each having a slanted plane and disposed with probes are disposed on substrates, and after the substrates are fixed, the position alignment in the x-, y- and z-directions of each mounting base is performed relative to a rectangular base clump.
According to the technologies disclosed in Patent Documents #1, #2 and #3, as the positions along the z-direction of a plurality of substrates disposed with probes are adjusted, the positions along the x- and y-directions of the substrate vary. For example, according to Patent Document #3 (refer to FIG. 4 in this Document), as the z-axis adjusting screw 62 is rotated to move the contact probes 1 together with the mounting base 36 along the z-direction, the mounting base 36 swings so that the top ends of the contact probes 1 displace along the x- and y-directions. According to the technologies disclosed in Patent Documents #1, #2 and #3, it is therefore difficult to adjust the positions along the x-, y- and z-directions of the substrates because the adjustment along the x- and y-directions and the adjustment along the z-axis direction mutually influence.
In the probe cards disclosed in Patent Documents #1, #2 and #3, the contact probes and a printed circuit board are electrically connected in the following manner. Partial areas of a wiring pattern of contact probes are exposed in a window formed in a substrate made of a resin film for supporting the contact probes, and the wiring pattern exposed in the window is made in pressure contact with the electrodes of the printed circuit board. With this arrangement, as the contact probes are moved relative to the printed circuit board, the resin film substrate supporting the contact probes is deflected. Since the resin film is hardly bent along the surface direction of the film, the easy direction of moving the contact probes relative to the printed circuit board is limited. Accordingly, for the probe head disclosed in Patent Documents #1, #2 and #3, it is difficult to adjust freely and omnidirectionally the position and posture of each contact probe.